I remember playing Circle of the Moon on the original GBA, not sure how my eyes didn't become so permanently strained that I ended up blind. It was a great game though - I'd love some GBA games to crop up on the Switch, like they did with the Wii U's, albeit hampered there by not being portable.

I love the two Steamworld Dig games too. The first one is more Rogue-like and the second is a more crafted, Metroid-style experience.

Darksiders doesn't have the tight, interconnected world design required for a Metroidvania. It's just an open world where you go to one point, finish the dungeon there and then rarely go back. Darksiders 2 has the backtracking but that's more for padding than clever game design.

I loved Guacamelee (the sometimes complex finger gymnastics made up for the memes) but the genre isn't one I actively seek out. And although I have played them both a very long time ago, I have completed neither Metroid nor SotN. I got to the reverse castle in SotN, got lost, spent ages going back and forth and then gave up. I left Axiom Verge for similar reasons. Owl Boy has many goods things going for it, but I found it to be a little too much of a slow burn.

This is the post where I show up and go on about the fact that Super Metroid is still (for me) the best Metroidvania game ever made, the best game on the SNES and my personal all-time favourite game. Barring some QOL stuff we would expect these days it's arguably perfect.

I've never spent enough time with a lot of the Castlevania ones, though SOTN is a legit classic. Fantastic artstyle, world and gameplay.

I've been dipping in and out of Hollow Knight, but I've yet to really "click" with it. It looks gorgeous, but I'm still waiting for that moment where I fall in love with it. Will persist though.

I still need to get back to Axiom Verge as well, though I fear I've lost my place in that game and might need to start again.

The more I think about them, the more I realise I've only played and completed a handful of these types of games. That includes all the Metroid games (bar the original, Prime 2: Echoes and the Metroid 2 remake, which I'm still dipping in and out of), Shadow Complex and a couple of others.

But it's arguably my favourite genre of games. It's definitely up there with the immersive-sim genre (Deus Ex, Dishonored etc) as a formula I just adore.

Dangerblade wrote:y'all need to play Kyntt Underground and La-Mulana if you haven't already

I remember the Knytt games! Though I especially liked the more self contained episodes of Knytt Stories because of its experimental 'what if?' approach to the platforming. And the tune to This Level Remains Unfinished is still in my head to this day